GTA 6: Strauss Zelnick, the Take-Two boss, in his own words

Strauss Zelnick is chairman and CEO of Take-Two Interactive, the publisher that owns Rockstar Games and releases Grand Theft Auto VI on November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Rockstar talks about the game. Zelnick talks about its date, its price and its money, mostly on Take-Two’s quarterly earnings calls.

He took the job after an investor-led takeover of Take-Two in 2007. Before that he was president and chief operating officer of 20th Century Fox from 1989 to 1993, then chief executive of BMG Entertainment from 1994 to 2000, and he founded the investment firm ZMC in 2001. At the stockholders meeting of September 17, 2026, he dated his team’s arrival to March 2007, with the share at $17 and annual revenue under $1 billion, and put the stock’s rise since then at about 1,200%, against 440% for the S&P 500.

What he has said about GTA 6, May 2025 to September 2026

Date	Where	What he said
May 2, 2025	IGN, day of the first delay	“There’s always a risk of slippage and I think as soon as you say words like absolutely, you jinx things”
November 6, 2025	GamesIndustry.biz, day of the second delay	“I’m confident in the date, that’s why we set it”
Late April 2026	Bloomberg, reported by VGC	“Rockstar always starts on console”
May 2026	Business Insider, reported by IGN	On the development budget: “it was expensive”
May 17, 2026	Founders podcast, reported by IGN	The game is “about 18 months behind the original date”
August 7, 2026	IGN	“Pricing has not kept pace with inflation”
August 7, 2026	Analyst call, reported by Variety	Pre-orders are “unprecedented and astonishing”
August 7, 2026	Variety	“I think Netflix had 200 million subscribers”
September 17, 2026	Stockholders meeting, reported by Inven Global	“No recurrent consumer spending anticipated with regard to this launch”

The numbers around his quotes

The 18 months went furthest. Rockstar announced two delays, on May 2, 2025 and November 6, 2025, and IGN read Zelnick’s figure as an internal target of spring 2025 that was never made public. On the same podcast he backed the November 19 date: “November 19th, I do know. It’s been announced.”

On money he answers with a word or a comparison. Business Insider put spending at $1 billion to $1.5 billion in May 2026, an analyst estimate rather than a Take-Two figure, and Zelnick would only call the budget expensive. He defended the $79.99 Standard edition on August 7 by saying “the real cost of a AAA video game is a whole lot lower today than it was 20 years ago.” On pre-orders, he added that “we just don’t know how it’ll translate into sales.”

His Netflix figure was off. Variety, in the same article, pointed out that Netflix had passed 325 million subscribers at the end of 2025, and Zelnick declined to say who paid whom for the Extended Look premiere.

On PC he gives a percentage. A big title’s PC share “can be 45%, 50% of the sales,” he told Bloomberg, against 5% when he joined in 2007, and on September 17 he called the platform “more and more important” for Take-Two. GTA 6 is announced for consoles, and the PC question has its own page. At the same meeting he said the game would ship in 13 languages, Spanish and Portuguese among them.